The explanatory advantage of social identity theory is that it accounts for how resistance to domination and immoral commands develops. The mantra that anyone could become a brute or a tyrant doesn’t even acknowledge that this happens.

To say that under comparable circumstances & influences anyone would act like torturers or genocidalists, I assume means saying that anyone who grows up in that historical context might do what they did. OK - but what about people who have not grown up in an environment which instils as a commonly accepted truth the belief that non Aryan people are subhuman or vermin?

It’s just not believable that your average LP commenter, with his or her own psychological history and circumstances, if teleported into Bergen-Belsen in an SS uniform, would uncritically do as instructed by superior officers. Whereas someone who hated Jews and felt it was socially OK to do so, might.

The mantra that ‘any of us might do the same’ is peculiar to say the least.

Is ‘Mr Death’ the doco about the guy in the States who built execution equipment?

yes.

Well one of us did have an unfortunate and wild time with a Fijian ex-soldier, one of Rabuka’s attack dogs of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit who was part of the atrocities of the first two Fijian coups. Look at Rabuka now, the senior respected statesman. His crew? Now all dead at the hands of rival soldiers, in prison, or locked up in the criminal psych ward of St Giles.

I’d like to say that in Englands place, I would have behaved differently, but I dont know because I wasnt there and I have never been in that situation. I do believe that under the right circumstances, most of us are capable of anything.

Errol Morris definitely one of the finest film-makers, ever.

Morris does seem to have diverse interests.

Morris is sensational. ‘Mr. Death’ is one of the best docos ever made, and that (unjustly)isn’t even as highly regarded as ‘Thin Blue Line’ or ‘Gates of Heaven’ which make top ten lists all over the place.

I find it interesting that the subject matter he tackles has changed over time. Where he started out documenting the foibles of pet cemetery owners and an obscure murder case, he ended up on Abu Ghraib and before this a lengthy interview doco with Robert MacNamara.

I’ll be seeing this one soon…

http://www.errolmorris.com/

This is the first Morris film I’ve seen, and I was impressed. Time to go back and look at his earlier work.

And it must be said that the soldiers were a varied bunch. At least one of them looked like he was about to crack up on screen, while others were more complex and difficult characters (Morris wasn’t able to talk to Graner - Graner is still in the jug). England’s feminist analysis only partially convinced me, but I was glad to get the chance to hear this woman speak and to see her. She went from being a symbol and a strange presence in some deeply disturbing photographs to being a human being.

An unintentionally amusing section of the film came when one chap mentioned that they had tried to use hip hop music and then heavy metal in a way that would distress the prisoners. Neither of those genres worked, but the detainees apparently couldn’t stand country music.

that is a very far cry from accepting without demur the suggestion that hired into in her job anyone else, with completely different life history and so forth, might be reasonably expected to behave just as dreadfully.

Agreed. In my own roundabout way I was engaging with Darlene’s argument by saying there were other things to be factored into the ‘What would I do if it was me?’ question, and that England’s behaviour seemed to me to be commensurate with her background, including her attraction to and arrival in the army.

This is the sort of discussion where it’s fatally easy not to notice the elision from ‘reasons’ to ‘excuses’ as one works through the permutations. I don’t think England’s background excuses her behaviour — but I do think it helps to explain it.

Tigs I doubt you would have volunteered for such an experiment (pretending to be a participant in prison life) when you were at uni (unless you’ve changed a lot since then.) Some psychologist should do a study on the kinds of personalities who self-select to be subjects for these sorts of bizarre experiments. I vividly remember about ten years ago reading a classified ad in the campus paper for volunteers to have a measuring device of some kind attached to their penises while they watched different sorts of movies. Worthy contribution to knowledge and all that, but really….

It’s worth remembering, Laura, that many of the people in Abu Ghraib were young and/or male or trying very hard to fit into an aggressive culture.

The film points out that the actual torture went on away from the camera lens (although obviously it’s easy to have different opinions about definition when it comes to things like “torture”). The actions were regarded as “criminal” and “humiliation”. Some of the actions were deemed to be “standing operating procedure”.

While it’d be nice to say that “I’d never behave like that”, I just don’t think it’s something that can be honestly said (and I don’t think it helps us to learn anything when we do say it - we’re all human). I’ve never been to a war zone. And no, I wouldn’t enlist.

Also, it should also be pointed out that these people (people like England) aren’t people with real power. According to the Wikipedia entry about England:

“Born in Ashland, Kentucky,[3] England moved with her family to Fort Ashby, West Virginia, when she was two years old. She grew up as the daughter of a railroad worker, Kenneth England, who worked at the station in nearby Cumberland, Maryland, and Terrie Bowling England. The family lived in a trailer park. At school, England was known for wearing combat boots and camouflage fatigues.

“England joined the United States Army Reserve in Cumberland in 2001 while she was a junior at Frankfort High School near Short Gap, to escape from a night job in the same chicken-processing factory in Moorefield made famous in a PETA video[4] and to earn money so she could go to college to become a storm chaser. She was also a member of the Future Farmers of America. After graduating from Frankfort High School in 2001, she worked as a cashier in an IGA store and married a co-worker, James L. Fike, in 2002, but they later divorced. She was sent to Iraq in 2003.”

The last post I did was about child abuse. I think we can accept that people respond in different ways to the pain and stresses attached to that. Well, I think we can also accept that people can respond in different ways to being placed in a war situation.

Tigtog, the Stanford experiment was carried out on young men - college students - not on mature people who have seen a bit of life and developed their empathetic capacities. For this reason I’m not inclined to credit it with all the explanatory power that’s usually claimed for it.

True, and that account from one man who refused to continue with the Milgram experiment reveals that he was middle-aged with a strong distrust for authority and a suspicious nature. He also thought that Milgram’s experiments were only a pale imitation of the structured enforcement of authoritarian abuse under the Nazis, where there were dangerous consequences for those who refused to participate in the humiliation and abuse of the undesirables. A strong enforcement structure makes it more likely that people will comply in order to save themselves.

Of course, the bulk of the guards at Abu Ghraib were young people who went into the army either straight from or not long out of high school. There were also real consequences for them under military discipline in refusing that were not there for student volunteers at Stanford. Again, that makes it more likely that they would comply rather than less likely.

Me, now, older, wiser and super-skeptical? Yes, I would refuse if the consequences were only on me. Would I still refuse if the consequence were having my family added to a list of who gets rounded up to go to prison next week? I can’t answer that one as definitely. Would I have had the experience and skepticism to refuse back when I was first at uni? I really have no idea.

Tigtog, the Stanford experiment was carried out on young men - college students - not on mature people who have seen a bit of life and developed their empathetic capacities. For this reason I’m not inclined to credit it with all the explanatory power that’s usually claimed for it.

Darlene, I still reject what you are saying, in particular the idea that anybody might do the same as Private England when given her job. I’m certain I would not participate in torture short of being physically forced to, no matter how collusive the environment, and I’m certain I’m far from alone in this.